VIEWING "writing" POSTS
Tue, Dec 2nd 2008, 09:27
Writing... You have an idea. You like it. You explain to someone. They like it. You read some scripts in the same medium that you're aiming for. You sit down. You write. You leave it a while. You rewrite. You've finished. You think... Is this a giant pile of crap? I've just wasted hours of my life on this and it might be crap. How do we find out whether it isn't or not? So far I've discovered the following...
(a) Read it out loud. This can help, but often I still can't see the thing as a whole.
(b) The old leave it in a drawer for a couple of weeks, then read it trick. Yes this helps, but can also lead to the terrible realisation that the idea is actually crap and needs a great deal of work.
(c) Go for a walk. This really works for me. Just walking the dog and thinking about the idea. Thinking about things from a new perspective or character's pov. Thinking about adding in new characters, or taking out scenes. Highly recommended.
(d) Read it out loud to someone else. This is much better than (a). All the bits that make you cringe slightly when you read it to yourself suddenly make you writhe in agony. It becomes a lot clearer what has to go, plus you can interview your listener afterwards to see if they liked it, understood it, were intrigued. Also recommended by Frank Cottrell Boyce who is somewhat more well known than me.
(e) Read a new writing self-help book, or re-read an old one. I find this helps sometimes, even if I'm just picking out passages or chapters. It helps me to focus and go right back to the basics.
(f) Read some more scripts in the same milieu (hoping that's the correct use of milieu). Then review your own script again. I find this helps sometimes - I can see how my script stands up against similar stories written by my contemporaries.
(g) Deep down, you know the truth. I think that deep down, you know yourself if something is good or not. It doesn't mean you're going to admit it to yourself though. That would require hours, possibly days, of therapy.
(h) The final solution. Send it off to whoever you were hoping to send it to - that competition, that producer you know, that director. Or alternatively, if you write and direct or produce yourself... make it. Await feedback, or see if the production works if you've made it yourself. This is the most terrifying bit of all.
After all this writing fiddling and soul searching the question may arise "Why am I torturing myself?"
This is a question I have often asked yours truly before reminding myself that I am a writer, and considering all the terrible things that happen in the world, I've actually got it good and I should stop having an artistic paddy.
I have written lots of aborted, half finished, or even finished-but-crap things over the years. Some will never see the light of day. Some were good ideas that can be recycled I hope. I think the key thing though is that the general graph of skill and storytelling ability has been on a gradual incline from indifferent to good and hopefully, occasionally, to inspired. I think it's important to just keep writing, even if, after all the in depth scrutiny and detailed tinkering, some of turns it out to be a load of old wallop.
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Fri, Mar 13th 2009, 08:32
We've just spent the last couple of weeks doing a lot of meetings down in London, pitching ideas and so on. I thought it might be useful to mention a few of the big questions we get asked - things that need thinking about before heading into a meeting.
There are several questions that are asked more often than not. First is, "Are you really brothers?" (D'accord!) Next is, "Do you fight?" (Negatory) At student events we also often get asked, "Where do you get your ideas from?" (Sheesh!)
But in pitch meetings there are some big questions that always come up. The first biggie is "What's it really about?" This weighty question will apply to even the fluffiest pre-school idea. And while it is a mighty annoying question, it is also an important one I think. Part of me does wonder if a filmmaker necessarily needs to know explicity what something is really about. Especially if they're making a short or experimental piece. Sometimes what flows out of you creatively will have all kinds of instinctive resonances and underlying meanings. But if you're trying to sell a series idea then I think you do need to know the answer to this ubiquitous question or you could come unstuck further down the line. [continued]
Another question that sounds like a cliché, but which you also need to know is, "What is the motivation for this character?" Or rather what is the motivation for this character's behaviour? And if it's a long running format idea - why does the character's behaviour persist?
Again it's easy to scoff at this question and I confess to the occasional private scoff, but not knowing the answer will make you look unprepared and as though you don't know your own characters.
The last big question we hear is, "What kind of stories will there be?" Sometimes the person you're pitching to won't quite get the idea for whatever reason. There is nothing like an example storyline to unlock the world you've created. When it comes down to it a pitch document saying this series will be thrilling and funny doesn't establish if the final concept will be (a) thrilling or (b) funny. The proof is in the pudding, which in this case is a nicely baked treatment, a well risen script, or at the very least, a collection of juicy paragraphs hinting at a variety of stories.
Here endeth the lesson.
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Wed, Apr 22nd 2009, 15:04
The new series of Noddy entitled Noddy in Toyland is now airing on Five. One of my episodes "Domino Town" has already aired, but the next one "Hide and Seek Whiz" is on tomorrow morning at 7.45am (only in UK, channel FIVE). The show was put together by Chorion Silver Lining and animated by Brown Bag Films in Ireland.
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Fri, May 1st 2009, 11:24
I think one of the most valuable lessons a screenwriter can learn is that the worst thing needs to happen. I don't mean the writer's fingers fall off... I'm talking about story. I think I made a common mistake when I first started writing and that was liking my characters so much I didn't want anything bad to happen to them. But think of any of your favourite films or TV series and you'll usually find that the thing the protagonist really didn't want to happen... happens.
In ET, Elliot is separated from ET and ET appears to die.
In Howl's Moving Castle, Sophie thinks she may have killed the person she loves.
In Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Joel realises too late that he doesn't want his memories to be erased.
Only once it's happened, does the protagonist realise they're going to pull their socks up and do something even more extreme and dramatic to rescue the situation. I think this rule particularly applies to the mythic adventure stories that Hollywood thrives on. Often it's represented as the antagonist getting what they want for a few moments - think of any Bond film. There's always the bit where the bad megalomaniac presses the World Destruct button. He seems to have won, and Bond's job suddenly becomes even more difficult, but the hero still overcomes. From a viewer's perspective, this is much more dramatic and therefore much more satisfying.
Which is one of the reasons the Transformers film that came out a couple of years ago is so unsatisfying. There's this All Spark thingamabob that gives life to machines and the bad dude Decepticons really want it. But they never get it. We never get to see what they'd do if they got it. As a result the film suffers from a lack of tension. There's just this big fight where you're not really sure who's who or what's going on because of all the shaky camera, so you don't really care. (This is only one of the problems with the film along with overwordy scenes, an off kilter sense of humour, scenes that could be trimmed at the ends, and a massive hole in the character identification department, especially with regard to the Transformers themselves).
With our latest short film The Moon Bird we're trying to create a more traditional narrative tale and trying to crack that way of storytelling. One of the crucial elements therefore has to be that our antagonist Experimentia (a witch) has her moment of triumph.
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Fri, May 8th 2009, 08:20
Last week I attended a session at the Stratford upon Avon Literary Festival. Apparently there's a famous writer who came from this neck of the woods once. Anyway... I picked out The Art of Adapation as an interesting session. Andrew Davies of Pride and Prejudice et al. fame was due to be there but had to go to Hollywood instead. The panel didn't disappoint though.
Paul Allen talked to three writers, radio writer Mary Cutler (The Archers, Falco radio adapations), novelist and screenwriter David Nicholls (Starter for Ten, Tess of the D'Urbervilles adaptation for TV) and Deborah Maggoch (adapter of Pride and Prejudice for the big screen, and The Diary of Anne Frank for the BBC).
Actor Richard Derrington did some readings. He has a great voice and I recognised him from a play (rather appropriately an adaptation of the novel Unless) that my wife was Costume Supervisor for at the Stephen Joseph Theatre.
Various elements of adaptation were discussed. Here's a few nuggets that I picked up.
Paul Allen kicked off asking about voiceover. Obviously books are often told in a first person narrative which makes voiceover seem an obvious choice. But it can often be a lazy option. Sometimes the adapted dialogue needs to be more like the internal narrative of the original book and less like the dialogue as written in the original. Sometimes the deliberate use of voiceover at a crucial moment can work really well, especially if it's used sparingly elsewhere.
There was a lot of talk about what you keep, what you chuck away and what you add. Essentially you have to ignore all the fans who say, "you are going to include that bit aren't you?" and create something that seems authentic to yourself.
Adaptations of real lives can be tricky because they don't have plots! Sometimes you have to fill in the gaps. For example Deborah Maggoch commented that Anne Frank's diary isn't very specific about why she fell in and then out of love with Peter. So Deborah had to make a leap of imagination for her TV adaptation.
Dates of events are often shuffled around to suit the screen adaptation.
Adaptations into serial form have other requirements... you need to find a way of summarising at the end of a week of radio stories. And at the beginning of the new week you need to summarise and have a second big bang beginning.
Writing about absent characters works in a novel, but is trickier in radio.
When adapting something that's been successfully adapted before you have to find the themes in the story that resonate with you and find a new angle. David Nicholls revealed he's working on a new film version of Great Expectations, but it's still too early to say if it'll make it beyond script stage.
When adapting create your first draft from the original work, then don't refer back to the original work again. That is regressive. The adaptation should evolve from the draft.
Sometimes the "favourtie bit in the book" doesn't translate to screen and has to be left out completely. David Nicholls spoke about how in his novel Starter for Ten there is a comedy dance sequence which everyone who reads the book finds very memorable. When he adapted his novel for film he was encouraged to include that scene. The scene was shot for the film, but it just didn't fit in to the screen narrative. As a result the whole scene was dumped. David said it was expensive lesson for him to learn.
Depending on the project, the writers used the book alone as the basis for a story, or they did do some research around the era. Sometimes for real and recent events they decide not to talk to the people involved and to find their own story in amongst the existing material.
And there it is... and remember, all but one of Shakespeare's plays were adaptations of earlier works.
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Tue, Jun 2nd 2009, 09:51
This quarter's Writers' Guild of Great Britain magazine features an article about our BAFTA experience with Codswallop.
The Writers’ Guild of Great Britain is the trade union representing writers in TV, radio, theatre, books, poetry, film, online and video games.
In TV, film, radio and theatre, the Guild is the recognised body for negotiating minimum terms and practice agreements for writers.
We campaign and lobby on behalf of all writers – by joining the Guild you can help make our voice even stronger.
I've found the Guild's publications very useful when negogiating fees for TV and games. They also have a good blog which you can follow here.
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Thu, Jul 2nd 2009, 09:00
The other night Greg and I had the pleasure of being invited to a private exhibition and meal by The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in our home town of Stratford upon Avon.
I have to admit to having a preconception that the tour and facilities would be a bit old hat, with nothing much to see. I'm not quite sure where this preconception came from, but it's probably common to people living on top of tourist attractions. I remember visiting Toronto and going up the CN Tower - then chatting with a local policewoman who'd lived in the city all her life and never been up the tower!
In fact, the team running the Trust were really friendly, forward thinking and the pre-tour audio-visual experience was actually very engaging. It was a little like a ghost train (without the train) where you are led through a series of rooms which feature different artefacts, models and mini-films about Shakespeare's life (read by Juliet Stevenson and Patrick Stewart).
The highlight of this had to be the First Folio which they have on display. Wow! We didn't expect that to be there. Without the printed folios Shakespeare's plays would have disappeared into history. Shakespeare himself might have been forgotten. Stratford upon Avon would certainly be a different place and I would never have met my wife (yes Shakespeare was part of the reason we met!). The First Folios originally cost £1. One was sold in 2006 for just under £3million. Not a bad investment if you happen to have lived for 400 years.
We were then given a tour of their exhibition "Shakespeare Found" by Stanley Wells CBE, which features some remarkable portraits of the bard 
himself, including the Cobbe portrait which may represent the closest likeness of the man compared to any other scultpure, engraving or painting.
It also has portraits of Shakespeare's patron The Earl of Southampton - who may also have been the bard's Master-Mistress (sonnet 20) if you know what I mean!
Anyway, if you're in Stratford, I'd certainly recommend to take a visit to the Centre on Henley Street. Well worth it.
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Tue, Jun 30th 2009, 15:55
Last weekend I gave up my Saturday to attend one of the TENacity workshops being run by the West Midlands writers' agency SCRIPT. The title was "GENRE BUSTING: Writing Genre Material that is fresh, ground-breaking and original". The course was run by Red Room Films producer Claire Ingham and also featured a guest spot with Phil Ford, head writer on the Sarah Jane Adventures and writer for Torchwood and Doctor Who.
It was an interesting day and although I felt like I knew quite a lot of what was covered (what a big head I am) it was never boring and I never felt sleepy (as you sometimes do at these events). Both Claire and Phil were full of useful insights into genre and the business of making TV and films.
One takeaway for me was the concept of 'main character' and 'central character'. Main Character being the protagonist, the hero or heroine, someone who has a character arc (oh how everyone hates that phrase!) and the Central Character being someone who doesn't really go through any majors changes, but who is a focal point for the story.
An example given was Silence of the Lambs where Jodie Foster's character Agent Starling is the Main Character, but Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter is the Central Character. I suppose another example would be The Third Man where Holly Martins is the Main Character and Harry Lime (played by Orson Welles) is the Central Character. Like most things you learn about story, it seems blindingly obvious once someone has pointed it out, but it needed someone to point it out in the first place for you to sit up and take notice.
Other useful hints and tips
- In the US if you want to work on a series they like to see a "Shadow Script" of a programme, i.e. if you want to write for CSI, you should write a sample episode and send it to them.
- In the UK "Shadow Scripts" are a big no-no. They don't want to see your script in case they are later accused of nicking your ideas. They want to see something original which shows your "writer's voice" (another phrase you hear a lot).
In other words, taking my Doctor Who script with me wasn't a good idea. Which is why it stayed in its pink plastic covering and came back home with me. Ironically it's been a very useful script to show to everyone except those working on Doctor Who because it shows I can write to a format (plus I learned loads doing it - not least about simplifying plot and being able to tie up lots of loose ends in a satisfying way).
I'd recommend the other TENacity courses based on this one. I'd loved to have gone to the one with Helen Cross in Bromsgrove too, but I'll be in Aberdeen!
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Wed, Jul 15th 2009, 08:40
I’m thirty four next month. I don’t know if I’ve somehow invisibly moved into a subtly different phase or time in my life but I notice that I’ve become occasionally preoccupied by memory and its imperfections.
I don’t know if it’s something particular to men rather than women, but I seem to have forgotten all kinds of things about my own life. Sometimes my wife will remind me of a place or a person and I will barely recall the situation if at all. In my twenties I used to think about my school days a lot. Now I hardly think about them. Some memories, particularly the most exciting and adventurous ones – like the times I travelled for months through Eastern Europe and then later to Australia and New Zealand – they can seem as though they happened to another person; like something I saw in a film.
I don’t keep a diary. The nearest thing to it is this blog. There doesn’t seem much point as most days would be fairly banal and much like all other days from a ‘what I did point of view’. Perhaps ‘what I felt’ might be more interesting, but still, there wouldn’t be so much variation on the micro day to day, week to week level.
I have very occasionally kept a diary – usually when I’ve been travelling – and that only serves to demonstrate the unreliability of memory. There are incidents and meetings recorded in there which make me go, ‘how could I have forgotten that!’
Arguably the fact that once reminded I do remember them means that my memory hasn’t so much lost the information as forgotten where to find it. But without the diary to locate it, what other great incidents from my life have been lost in the library of my brain?
I suspect the fact that we lose or misplace our memories, or that they fade in detail like an old picture must be a natural mechanism. If I remembered everything about my past in livid detail I suppose it might start to overwhelm the here and now. Embarrassing moments would forever be just as embarrassing to remember as they were to live through. But equally, joyous moments are always slightly fading away too.
What I hope and suspect is that the subconscious hangs on to all this material in some way. Perhaps it makes me aware of who I am without having to refer to every remembered, or half-remembered, or stored-but-forgotten detail?
I suppose what worries me is that losing a memory is almost like losing a part of your life. It’s a kind of death. If you don’t remember something, then it’s almost like it never happened. A part of living is lost and through that process a part of you dies. Combined with a heightened awareness of mortality with aging parents and grandparents it creates a rather unsettling phenomenon.
I also wonder if memory malfunction is something to do with activity. In my twenties I had a lot less life to remember and probably had a lot more time to think about old times and reassess them. In that way, I was constantly warming up old memories. With an ever increasing (internal) pressure to “achieve” something as many 30 and 40 something’s feel, I perhaps live a lot more in the here and now, and actually quite a lot in the what-might-be, that I don’t think about the past as much.
This is turn makes me wonder if this ambition and busyness causes a narrowing of viewpoint, expectations, imagination and indeed personality. Or is it vital to choose a single point and head towards it to achieve something, even if the cost is your own memory and personal foundation? It doesn’t sound like a good thing now I come to write it. Though perhaps I'm being a little dramatic. I do that from time to time.
My wife works with students, and while they can often be frustrating for their lack of commitment, she says they can be energising because of their openness, hopefulness and belief in themselves.
This morning, while I was waking up, my subconscious was trying to remind me of the time when my brain ‘felt’ like that.
It wasn’t so much a memory of an event, as a memory of being; a memory of how it feels to have so much possibility ahead of you. I hope that’s a memory I never lose.
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Thu, Jul 23rd 2009, 10:12
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Tue, Jul 21st 2009, 12:32
A while ago Amazon had a competition to answer the question - What sports do wizards play besides Quidditch? The winners got to go to London to see one of the hand crafted Tales of Beedle the Bard.
I didn't win. And so I shouldn't. I'm in my thirties for God's sake. I do hope the grand finalists where children or I'd be very upset. Of course, I didn't write my entry, as being a Muggle I don't know much about the wizarding world (apart from a few obscure books handed down from my Great-Great Grandfather Alexander McLeod, who I believe was a dragon handler at the Royal Wizarding Zoological Gardens of Edinburgh). Anyway... I found this poem inside a book at the local library...
Here is the text laid out in easy-read format:
Quidditch is Not the Only Game!
By the venerable Sir Runcible Spoon
Written in 1949, Hogsmeade
Quidditch is not the only game of note!
Though ‘tis most favoured by popular vote.
There are many great sports and activities
Like Beat the Boggart and Horntail Squeeze,
There’s Hippogriff Racing, and Water Snitch,
Even Roll the Auror, and Hunt the Witch.
Parlour games are good when the weather’s foul
Basilisks and Ladders, Pin the Beak on the Owl.
In old times the grand game was Goblin Ball,
A quite cruel affair, with no rules at all.
But myself, I favour Olympian sport:
Vanishing Discus, Javelin by Thought.
But if you favour games set on the pitch
Well you simply can’t beat it… Quidditch.
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Thu, Mar 26th 2009, 10:15
David Morley at Warwick Univeristy has done some great podcasts for writers. I've just been watching his one about poetry and written a poem as a result. Here it is. It's called Leaf
Leaf
Broad leaf
On a sea of breezes
Pitched against brothers
Hitched and tugged and torn
Lime, then grass, then ocean green
Brushing ropy veins upon xylem thorn.
Spring is sudden with unfurling budding
Summer follows, the spectrum flapping
Autumn then, full of sail and swash.
At last the mast is splitting, giving.
A pyre smokes auburn into ash.
Then the lonely season
The last
Before
Leaf.
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Thu, Sep 25th 2008, 11:57
Once upon a time I wanted to be a science fiction writer. It's strange as it's not something I read much, if at all, anymore. I even wrote three opening chapters to a novel. While recently going through some old files I discovered this short story Storm on Olympus which was mostly there, but just needed some tidying up and a proper ending. So here it is - download as a pdf and read at leisure. If you do read it, let me know what you think.
Download File
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Fri, Oct 2nd 2009, 10:47
There’s many different phases to making a film. The first moments are always fun. At the genesis of the idea you feel excited and open to all the possibilities. There’s the quick fire ideas that add to whole. There’s the first few loose sketches to pour over which unlock the doors to a new world. At the end of this first phase there may be some notes and maybe even a loose story or script.
The next few phases tend to be more frustrating, but are essential to get any film made… the waiting for funding, the writing and rewriting the script, locking down the design, the animatic, the blocking of the scenes…
Finally animation starts to roll out and then the post production can start which is a mixture of both frustrating and exciting as the film starts to come alive (which is where we are now).
The Genesis of the Moon Bird
For The Moon Bird the first stage was Greg going on holiday and asking me to write him a Brothers Grimm style story. That was in August 2007. It was penance for when I was away on sabbatical, leaving Greg to direct Dog Tired on his own.
The first thing I noticed about the tales collected by The Brothers Grimm was that they were often very short – sometimes only a hundred words; but they all had a similar style, often morality stories, with compelling melodramatic characters. There was often shocking violence coupled with extraordinary visual ideas, like the lady who has her hands cut off and is then given new hands made from silver. There was often a happy ending. Bad guys got their comeuppance. Good people usually did well in the end but often went through terrible suffering and loss on the way there.
I wrote a 1200 word tale in their style (or at least the old fashioned style of the English translation) and that became the basis for the film we’re making now. It started:
“Once there was a little girl called Teardrop. Teardrop never knew her kind Mother or her noble Father because they were struck by plague not long after she was born. And so Teardrop was raised by an old Aunt who lived in the forest.”
The story evolved over time. In the Christmas of 2007 Greg spent a lot of time in visiting the hospital because of an ill relation, and started to work on storyboards during the long hours spent there. Those eventually fed ideas back into the story, and also provided useful in our application to Screen WM and 4mations for funding.
When the time came for the application, the story changed again, becoming about 400 words longer and including more detail about Teardrop’s past. We also put more emphasis on Teardrop being an active character. Here’s the opening paragraph from that version.
“Once there was a little girl called Teardrop, born on the last full moon of the year. Her Mother and Father were married many years but had never borne a child. When at last they found themselves with a baby to call their own they could not stop weeping for joy and so called her Teardrop.”
Finally, once we had the funding in place, it was time to tackle the script. The first draft was quite faithful to the written story and had a number of flaws; chiefly Teardrop was still too passive as a character. We made some notes and also gathered feedback from our exec producers Camilla Deakin and Dan Lawson and our mentor Golly at Aardman.
The second draft of the script stripped out a lot of original story elements, changed locations and altered the ending quite dramatically. In fact, if it was a well loved book, you’d probably scoff at our adaptation saying… well, it wasn’t like that in the book.
And the tweaks haven’t stopped there. We altered elements after watching the animatic. And even now, during the animation, we are adding small details to make the story flow.
Soon the film will be complete and then the story will be truly locked down… except that then it’s the turn of you the audience to watch and interpret it. I wonder what people will make of it?
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Wed, Oct 7th 2009, 10:22
Once again Peter McLuskie of the Light House has asked us to inveigle our way into his fantastic animation festival. The Flip Animation Festival is now in its sixth year and we've been fortunate enough in previous years to have sat on industry panels for debates, chair a session on Doctor Who animations, show an exhibition of prints, design the look for the festival, and opened the festival with a retrospective of our work.
This year we're back like a chronic rash... and are running a scriptwriting course, interviewing Sarah Cox and showing a programme of short films (not our own this time - instead it's a bunch of films that we love and want to share).
Find out more at the Flip Festival website and book your tickets asap!
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Wed, Feb 17th 2010, 08:50
It's time to rush out and buy the last two editions of Aesthetica Magazine for whom I've written two articles 'How To Animate: Parts 1 and 2'.
Each article is a ten part guide to coming up with ideas for animation and turning those ideas into reality.
You can keep up to date with Aesthetica Magazine on Twitter, Facebook or on their blog.
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